This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The voluminous documents that were part of the Atlantic Yards master closing, first made available yesterday by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) generated several pieces of news last night, detailed below.

Documents were made available only in hard copy, and in ten large binders. Jonathan Barkey, who accompanied me, shot a brief piece of video.

You can see a bit of Erin Durkin, a reporter for the New York Daily News, across the table--she was the only other press person to show up on the first day of document availability.

We were quietly supervised by a series of ESDC staffers who sat in the room to ensure, perhaps, that we didn't take any of the pages home.

The ESDC was willing to copy about 20 pages then and there, but said it could take a week to get larger quantities of documents. Barkey brought a camera and created some scans on-site, thus saving me time and money.